Unbreakable, Part 7

Unbreakable, Part 8

Unbreakable, Part 9

Unbreakable, Part 10

Unbreakable, Part 11

Dateline
September 13, 2013

Unbreakable, Part 12

Dateline
September 13, 2013

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>>but even behind bars
warren jeffs
was still very much in power and maintaining control over his lock, especially the flds community, which had recently sprung up in
west texas
. by this time the
1800
acre
ranch
and the sparkling new temple were complete.
local law
enforcement was keeping a close eye on the
ranch
, curious about it but also concerned about what was taking shape out there in the desert.
texas ranger
nick hanna.

>>west texas
people are generally friendly and welcoming individuals. but there was certainly concern because texas has a history of having incidents, whether it be waco.

>>as it was under construction, the
texas legislature
changed the age at which a person could marry with
parental consent
from 14 to 16.
rebecca
heard about the
ranch
, too. she wondered if any members of her family had lived there. she checked with the local sheriff to see what he knew. nothing, it turned out. but he did begin using
rebecca
as a sort of interpret ter. he would call me periodically and ask me, can you tell me about this or what this means to them?

>>then on an early
spring day
in march of
2008
, authorities in nearby
san angelo
got a call from a woman who said her name was
sarahbarlow
, claimed she lived at the
ranch
, was being abused and held at will against her husband.

>>she was a
young girl
. i think at the time of the
phone call
16. she had already given birth to a child, and with her age, we were able to do the math and recognize that would have been a
sexual assault
of a child.

>>and the women were in prairie dresses essentially. most of the buildings were constructed in like a
log cabin
type nature. and it almost seemed like you had gone back in time to a period that
america left
a long time ago.

>>whether the rangers knew it or not, they had just confirmed the worst fears of the nlsd faithful whose zombies preached the warning ever since the raid on the church in short creek way back in
1953
, a fact which some
1500miles awayrebecca
knew very well.

>>to know that the lives of people that you love dearly. understanding the responsibility of the law is like two worlds crashing together and having a major explosion in front of me. it felt like i was being ripped apart.

>>and almost immediately it seemed to go wrong. instead of 300 to 400 people the rangers expected to find, there was something like 700. including more than 400 children and dozens of
teenage girls
. finding
sarah
was like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

>>it was a very confusing situation. most of these ladies dressed alike. they sounded alike. their hair was fixed the same. there was only about four or five very
common names
on the
ranch
. and so it was very difficult to differentiate who belongs to who and who is who.

>>we started seeing signs in
plain view
of other abuse. we saw
young
girls with babies and
young
girls or appeared to be
young
that were expecting. and during these interviews looking for
sarah
, evidence of other crimes became apparent pretty quickly. so now that we see them, we're duty bound to act. on these instances of
child abuse
or
sexual abuse
of
young
girls.

>>several of the girls interviewed by
child protective services
said they were spiritually yibted with adult men. that no age was too
young
for this, and it was the prophet who decided when and woman they should marry. the next day 18 girls were determined to have been abused or at imminent risk of abuse, and were removed from the
ranch
. and then over the next few days dozens more children, some very
young
, were forcibly removed from their parents and taken to temporary housing.

>>my 2-year-old son was screaming, mother, don't let them take me. don't let them take me. i want to stay with you, mother. mother, please hold me.

>>and then four days after the raid began, a
court order
was issued to take away all the remaining children until a better assessment could be made of the what was going on inside the flds
ranch
. this time mothers, but not fathers, were allowed to go with them.

>>they had been predispositioned to believe that anyone from the outside was evil. we had no desire to go onto the
ranch
for any reason other than the call. you can't ignore a
young girl
's cries for help. you've got to act.

>>some of the mothers and children who had been separated were reunited at a makeshift shelter. eventually all of them were transferred to an overburdened
sports arena
here. and many flds members
young
and old were required to line up and submit samples of their dna, and then scores of toddlers and children were shipped off to
foster homes
around the state. some of them hundreds of
miles away
to live with families whose cultures they did not know, for how long they did not know. the state said it was for their protection.

>>this is about children at imminent risk of harm. children we believe had been abused or neglected.

>>the images set off a
fire storm
of controversy. former flds attorney
rob parker
.

>>what the state did in traumatizing the entire community and all those children, that was wrong. what texas should have done is taken a more targeted approach. not just to sweep up everybody. we didn't particularly enjoy it either. nobody likes taking a child out of its environment. but the law is the law and the court spoke and said the court is in danger. and so we had to do what we had to do.

>>there was still no sign of the mysterious
sarahbarlow
, whose call had prompted the raid and all that followed. the rangers did, however, find files of birth records. but untangling the web of names and bloodlines was overwhelming, if not impossible.

>>you were essentially learning an entire network of community or people. they all have similar names. they all look the same. they all dress the same. they all act the sap.

>>they needed somebody to tell them what it all mentd, crack the code, unravel the secrets. an expert who knew it all from the inside.

>>and finally he said, we are in over our heads. can you please come down and help us? and so i did.

>>and what she exposed
deep inside
the
ranch
was a very dark and carefully guarded secret about a religion and its prophet,
warren jeffs
.